Monday, March 19, 2007

Smashing the inevitability of “Big Sister”

Someone else sees a similarity between Hillary and Stalin . . .

At the top of the Drudge Report today is a link to an unauthorized Barack Obama campaign video. The video is a re-cut of a 1984 Apple computer commercial. The commercial was based on the George Orwell novel “1984,” which novel was partly inspired by Stalin. The new video has Hillary Clinton in the role of “Big Brother.”

Unfortunately, I'm not yet adept at doing those embedded links to YouTube, so a link to the video is here.

UPDATE: Apropos of Orwell, Newsday is reporting that the Clinton library is not setting any speed records in answering research requests:

“I haven’t received any documents or even a note indicating that they’re searching the records,” said Jeff Gerth, a former New York Times reporter who requested a wide range of the first lady’s files for an unauthorized Clinton biography he’s working on.

Sixteen months after the library started accepting applications, no major request for sensitive documents pertaining to Clinton’s first-lady years have been released.

Gerth, whose request was logged on Jan. 17, 2006, should be among the first to receive documents - or a rejection letter - based on the library’s first-come, first-served policy. He has received neither.

National Archives officials say the sheer volume of interest in both Clintons is slowing things down. As of last month, the archive had received 336 requests for documents, correspondence and e-mails totaling 9 million pages. That’s three timesthe material requested from George H.W. Bush’s archive in its first year.

“This is a tremendously complex and convoluted process,” said the library’s supervising archivist, Melissa Walker. “We review documents line by line, document by document, not box by box. It takes a lot of time.”Of the first 54 requests that were acted upon for both Clintons between January and November 2006, only four were granted - and they were for videos and ceremonial letters.

Since then, about 500,000 pages of documents have been released - but there’s been little movement on the three biggest Hillary Clinton requests, according to the people who made them.

“We’re getting nowhere,” said Tom Fitton, executive director of Judicial Watch, a Washington-based conservative government watchdog group that has long investigated the Clintons. His organization wants to see Hillary Clinton’s schedules and diaries. “We may have to consider filing a lawsuit but the legal issues are very, very complicated.”